Medieval & Early Modern
Bartolomé de las Casas
1484–1566 · Anti-slavery
The first voice raised at court against colonial bondage.
A Spanish settler who gave up his encomienda after witnessing its cruelty, Las Casas spent fifty years documenting and denouncing the enslavement of Indigenous peoples, arguing before the crown that they were free subjects and not property. His Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies became the founding European text of anti-colonial agitation, and it was read by every later critic of empire.
Why it matters for freedom
He argued to a royal court that conquest had no title, in the language the conquerors themselves claimed to respect.
Who they stood against
the conquistadors and the theologians who wrote justifications for enslaving the Indians